A precious Sunday afternoon.

An unlikely rainy May day… Mother’s Day.

And even as a “just” a bonus mom, I relish in the afternoon’s invitation to curl up on the couch with a book.

Which reminds me to share about the upcoming Book Club book. Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg.

As a reader, I’m a highlighter, underliner, dog-earer, circle, star, and exclamation point maker.

There isn’t one page in this book that doesn’t have some of the above on it.

My first read of this book was about two years ago and I’ve reread and referenced it many times since. It’s a jewel among gems.

It’s one of the required books for Teacher Training. Being able to talk about it in the group helped deepen its effects even more.

So I’m thrilled that it is this month’s Club book.

I’m also thrilled that Kathy Les offered thoughts on her first-timer experience from last month’s Club meeting.

She shared:

I’m someone who loves books and reads a lot. Each time the It’s All Yoga newsletter arrives in my inbox, I read with special interest the selections for the upcoming book club. Until the March meeting of the book club, I had only perused the list of selected books, but never attended. Well, that’s not exactly true. I perused the book list and a few times actually read the book without attending the meeting, mostly because of time conflicts, but in part because I was unsure of how the meeting would flow.

I did actually read (on the sly) two novels from among last year’s book club selections: All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki and Peace Like A River by Leif Enger. I really loved both these books. I liked that this was a yoga book club that didn’t necessarily focus on the obvious spiritual and motivational material, but both of these certainly have a strong ethical and spiritual overtone. When the next selection of books was announced — and included books of a motivational and spiritual nature, I was ready and intrigued. I hadn’t ever read anything by the Dali Lama and the idea of learning more about the notion of happiness in his Art of Happiness appealed to me.

It was a pleasure to learn more about the Dali Lama and his spiritual outlook on happiness and suffering and see it compared to western psychiatric thinking as expressed by the book’s co-author, Howard Cutler, MD. I devoured the book, each page full of comforting revelation and insight. So I decided to take the next step and attend the book club meeting to see how my fellow yogis reacted to the book. It was a lovely late afternoon meeting with a chance to meet others from the yoga studio who I did not already know. As with all of life — and as expressed by the Dali Lama in his book — we don’t really know someone until we take the chance to get to know them.

Each of the people who attended the meeting had interesting and different insights to impart. I not only learned about their perspective on the book, but also learned more about them. There’s nothing like the shared reading of a book to connect people. The book club is a special chance to get to know those who you see in yoga but don’t have time to get to know better during the class. And the book choices are well worth reading. The two upcoming books come highly recommended by Tami, the book club leader, and I look forward to reading and discussing them at the upcoming meetings.

Thanks for your feedback, Kathy. It’s rich discussion like this that makes these meetings so fulfilling.

I’m looking forward to our discussion on Lovingkindness on May 23rd, 4-5:30. I hope you will be there.